1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a motor-driving circuit and a recording apparatus including the motor-driving circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
The motors mainly used for printers are DC motors and stepping motors. A plurality of DC motors and stepping motors are used in accordance with the type or use of the printer.
To drive these motors, four transistors form an H-bridge circuit and each transistor is turned on and off to control an electric current to drive the motors (refer to, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 05-122988, in particular, FIG. 4 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 05-184194, in particular, FIG. 8).
FIG. 10 shows an example of the configuration to drive a printer motor. This configuration includes a printer controller 100, DC motors 102 and 103, stepping motors 104 and 105, DC motor drivers 106 and 107, and stepping motor drivers 108 and 109. The configuration shown in FIG. 10 requires the motor drivers to output a driving signal to each motor.
With reference to FIG. 11, motors are connected to motor drivers in accordance with the type of motor (or the properties of the motor). Progress of semiconductor process technology has allowed a motor driver to support a plurality of motors as long as the motors are of the same type.
Unfortunately, if several types of motor are required, as shown in FIG. 12, a different motor driver is required for each type of motor, even though one motor driver can drive a plurality of motors.
Use of a plurality of motor drivers increases the cost and size of the circuit board, and thus of an apparatus including the motor drivers, such as a motor control apparatus.